The Latest from Snark.art

A lot has changed at Snark.art in our year-and-a-half on the blockchain beat. We sat down with cofounders Andrey Alekhin and Misha Libman to get an update on upcoming projects, new community features, and developments in the digital art and crypto space.

What can we expect to see from Snark.art in the near term?

Andrey In just a couple weeks, if not sooner, we’re going to introduce some completely new functionality that we’re hoping will really take our community engagement to the next level. We’re creating a portal for all of our current and future collaborative video projects that’s really exciting. With 89 seconds Atomized, for example, collectors will be able to see their atoms in the context of the full artwork and also see the full artwork during community screenings.

We’re also going to launch the secondary market for The Old Testament and 89 seconds Atomized. We’ve got fewer than 60 atoms that are still unsold — as soon as they’re purchased, we’ll open up the ability for collectors to sell, auction, and bid on specific atoms.

Misha We’ve also revised the loan functionality on the back end to be incredibly inexpensive and fast. It’s going to be possible to borrow all of the atoms for just a few dollars, depending on gas prices. Instead of transferring all of the atoms to the exhibitor’s wallet, we’ll give the borrowers time-limited access to the atoms.

The metaphor I use is that, let’s say you own an apartment in New York and you rent it out to some guy in Argentine — you don’t send him the apartment, you give him the keys for a set amount of time. That should make the process around community loans significantly more seamless.

What kind of impact do you think that will have on the collector experience?

Andrey Personally my hope is that we see a lot more activity around the atoms of 89 seconds Atomized. Snark.art pieces. We already have about three hundred owners, some are arts organizations, some are groups of friends, and it’s going to be a lot easier for them to schedule a date for a screening, invite their friends, and get them involved in the projects. Down the road we’ll consider requests from museums for a period of a week or more, but right now we want to reward our initial community. That said, it’s always going to be in the community’s interest to have the artwork more visible, so that it will be a win-win.

And the secondary market should really change how people are collecting 89 seconds… We recently sold atom #1 at the Ethereal Summit for $550. And when people are able to purchase specific atoms that are around their own real estate, it should really change how people collect.

What’s been the biggest change on your end in the year or so since Snark.art launched?

Misha I think the biggest change is that we now have a lot of artists approaching us who are interested in getting away from the traditional, edition-based model of artwork. People are beginning to realize that a platform like Snark.art opens up a much wider variety of ways to democratize access to artwork.

Growing up out of our initial lab experiments, Snark.art has built some amazing technologies and we’re really excited at the opportunity to put it to work.

Have you found it easier to talk to artists about blockchain technology? Has awareness improved?

Misha I think we’ve just learned how to speak about it better. I’ve realized I shouldn’t use the word “blockchain” in the first few minutes, for example. I describe blockchain’s ability to allow communal ownership of digital art as an Uber Pool-like experience, where ownership and social engagement are intertwined. It is easier to grasp and it really does not matter to most whether it is accomplished with blockchain or nuclear fusion, as long as they understand the potential and not “block” you out in the first 15 seconds.

What are some new projects that Snark.art will launch in the near future?

Andrey Sometime next month, we’re planning to launch another project that’s really tailored to the blockchain. We’re going to offer 10,000 digital fortune cookies that you can buy, sell, or trade. Collectors will have the option to crack them open to reveal a unique piece of poetry that’s being written largely by AI. But in cracking them open you’ll also destroy the token’s monetary value.

Misha We’re also coming closer to doing a project with an artist/composer who works with an audiovisual archive of music and images. There are still a lot of specifics that we haven’t decided on, but we’re thinking it will be a single artwork that contains a lot of unique audiovisual elements and allows for a communal composition by their collectors.

Andrey We’re exploring projects that will bridge this physical-digital divide. Eventually it would be amazing to tokenize 3d-models that can be printed, for example.

Are you guys going to open Snark.art to anyone and everyone with an idea?

Andrey We believe that scaling in the art market is very different than any other market, because it’s like we can find something and do it with a thousand other artist. At our stage of development we don’t want to scale to thousands of artists, but instead work with select significant artists. We have interest from some really big names and we want to explore that right now.

Misha We’re still curating which projects we will help develop, but given the tools that we’ve already created, we can do this much faster than ever before.

Is there more of a need to reach out to the blockchain community? The art community:?

Andrey We initially saw Snark.art as a bridge between the art and blockchain communities. They’re very different groups, but they have a lot of drivers in common. With 89 seconds… we started selling in the middle of crypto-winter, so most sales went to the art community. They’re going to be less speculative than the crypto community — they don’t want to flip it immediately, they want to experience art. It’s harder to sell to them, because they’re buying for aesthetic reasons, and the secondary market will grow at a slower rate as a result. But as we grow, we want to tailor more projects to the blockchain community — experimenting with collective cooperation, tying that into interesting gaming mechanics.

It’s been a very volatile (though largely positive) couple of months for the cryptocurrency scene. Is that having an impact on the digital art market?

Andrey Digital art on the blockchain is growing, and investor money is starting to float into the market. It’s still one of the few industries in blockchain that already generates revenue. We still believe that art is one of the important use-cases, more obvious use-cases for blockchain.